Doki Doki (Hikikomori)
by Green Kneesocks
Summary: Serizawa Katsuya lives in a prison of his own making. It's not for his own good but for the good of everyone around him. He's resigned himself to this prison for years until he meets a girl online that makes his heart go doki doki. MobXSerizawa. Fem!Mob
1. Serizawa Katsuya

Serizawa Katsuya hadn't left his room in fifteen years. That didn't stop him from meeting the girl of his dreams.

At least he thought that she was a girl. He hoped that she was a girl. People lied all the time on the internet, himself included. On the internet he had friends and a job loved going outside and socializing and all of that other stuff that a person was supposed to do when they lived in society. That was one of the people he was on the internet, anyway. He didn't meet her while he was pretending to be that man. No. He met her on a forum for people with his…condition.

Not the hikikomori one.

The esper one.

He met her there when he was trying to get some answers. That had been months ago, back when he was going through one of his frantic periods. His stir crazy periods. The periods in his life where the walls got small and the curtains threatened to smother him like they smothered out any sunlight that may have come into his room. The periods in his life where he felt as caged in, as hermetically sealed, as the vitamin tablets mom made him take because his diet was so terrible and he never got any sunlight. He had been in a frantic period where he just wanted to find some way to control it, to find some answers as to why he even was the way he was.

He didn't find anything like that.

He found a bunch of people who had to struggle to bend spoons and light fires. A place where someone who could twist a metal spoon into a knot was impressive and someone who could produce less fire than a cheap lighter called himself the Pyrokinetic Godsend. He had been about to give up on that place when he met her.

Mob.

That was what she called herself. Her profile picture was of a cat in a plug suit. That was what intrigued him about her. She never talked about herself, she just offered everyone else words of encouragement. She called them all her friends. Friends. He had internet friends but not really. They didn't know him, the real him, the him that existed in the self-imposed exile of this room. Even on the hikikomori forum he wasn't entirely truthful about himself…

But here he could be.

Because they were all friends there.

She had said so. She said that she was so grateful to have so many friends now and that she had been all alone for so long. She said that she had to be alone. She said that once, years ago, she had lost control of her powers and done something terrible. Everyone asked her what she had done but she had been tightlipped on the subject. She just said that she lost control and now she couldn't be around people ever again.

And that she was so grateful to have friends.

He didn't think. After he read that comment, the one where she finally talked about herself, he made an account. He had initially followed her because of her avatar. A cat in a plug suit was interesting, and it said a lot about her. He was more of a Gundam person but it didn't have to be a binary. A person could like whatever mech shows that they wanted to.

Not mechs.

That was what she had said when he gathered up the courage to ask her if she liked other mech shows beyond Evangelion. He had private messaged her after following a comment chain she was in with someone who called himself Sho-Cool and liked to talk about animals. That was what he had been following, actually, their debate over whether or not hamsters were a superior pet to cats. Sho-Cool said yes because they were small and cuddly and were easy to transport. Apparently he traveled a lot. Mob thought that cats were superior because they were soft and fluffy and loved affection. She also didn't have a cat because her father was allergic.

She lived with her parents, too.

She was like him. She lived with her parents away from society because of her powers. He had been lurking for a while at that point but he knew that he had to talk to her. So he did. He debated for a while what to say to her, how to strike up a conversation. He wondered if this was what it was like to talk to women in real life…actually this was easier. He wasn't sure if she was a girl, for one thing. Girls didn't always say that they were girls and the people who were very vocal about being girls were, more often than not, guys pretending to be girls. They were usually worse at hiding though. Their avatars were either anime girls or models and they incessantly tried to chat everyone up.

He had a feeling that Mob was a real girl.

She said that she was a girl ages ago but almost never brought it up. She almost never talked about herself, actually, which was why he just asked her about her favorite mech shows. He couldn't just open with 'hey, you and me are the same and I think that I may have found the one person on the planet who could possibly understand me please be my friend' because that would have been coming on way too strong. If she really was a girl then she was probably on high alert for creeps. The internet had no shortage of them after all.

He hoped that she didn't think that he was a creep.

He watched his inbox for what felt like hours while he waited for her reply. If she even decided to reply. She could have just sent his message straight to the recycling bin. If she really was a girl then she probably got a million and one messages from a million and one guys trying to get with her and she was probably so burnt out from that, from all of that, that she just sent his message straight to the recycling bin with the rest of her spam.

But she didn't.

She said that her favorite mech show was Evangelion and also that EVAs weren't mechs at all. Then she explained lore, a lot of lore, and he let her because, well, she was responding to him. She was also still in the cats vs hamsters debate too, he had two tabs opened, and it was impressive how she could keep up so much at once…

And it made his heart go doki doki too.

Because, well, she was talking to him. She was telling him about her favorite show but she was talking to him, too. He tried to make his heart stop going doki doki though because, well, nothing good ever came from that. He learned fast how to spot the guys who were obnoxiously pretending to be girls but some guys were subtle…and there were some actual girls on the internet. Not his corner of it, they didn't make up a huge portion of the population, but there were some…and he had gotten crushes before. When he was younger and lonelier and going through the worst that puberty had to offer. He had come out the other side of that bigger and taller and a lot, well, calmer. About that anyway. Girls, or rather women, now.

Because he knew that no matter how much his heart went doki doki for a girl she would never want anything to do with him.

He knew that he had nothing to offer any woman wasting away in his room like that. He could never leave this room, ever, so this was the best that he got. He liked to squish feelings down to nothing before they could grow and grow and grow until his heart was choking in feelings that could never be reciprocated. He liked to try and exorcise those feelings like he exorcised the spirits that sometimes came into the house to bother him and mom. He tried to but he couldn't.

Because after her fourth message to him he knew.

The first message had been a long one about Evangelion. The second message had been about cats. The third one had been shorter…and it had been nothing but questions for him. She wanted to know why he only lurked and never posted. She wanted to know what his powers were. She wanted to know what his life was like. She wanted to know him. She wanted to know the real him, it seemed, and she wanted them to be friends, too.

She told him that he didn't have to answer a single one of her questions if he didn't feel comfortable.

But he did answer them. He answered all of them. He gave her honesty, total honesty, because they had met in a place of total honesty. He wanted to lie, though, to make himself seem like more than he was. He wanted to make it sound like he could only do something small and insignificant, that he had control of his powers, that he had a job and a life and he didn't freak out whenever his mom opened his door without asking or her footsteps outside of his room woke him in the middle of the night…or that he could even tall day from night without having to check the clock on his computer…

He didn't lie to her.

But he kept it light.

Because he didn't want to dump everything on her like that. He told her that he had trouble controlling his powers, that he moved things without touching them and often sent things flying, and that he lived with his mother. After a moment he tells her that he doesn't leave his room often. That's not a lie. He goes down to the kitchen table on his birthdays even though it makes him dizzy and sometimes he even sends mom flying….he didn't say a lot about that. Instead he mostly talked about games he liked. He told her that he spent most of his time either playing games or on the internet…

Which led to her fourth message.

She told him about the games she liked…and some of them were multiplayer. She sent her gamerhandle too if he wanted to play. The ones for her Switch and her Wii and her X-Box and her Playstation. They had a lot of the same consoles…and a lot of the same games.

After her fourth message he knew that his heart would not stop going doki doki anytime soon. She liked games. She said that she had spent the past few years playing games since she left school. There was an incident and she could never go back…or anywhere really. She lived in her room and had lived there for a while. He didn't press her on what the incident was. That was her business. He understood that she didn't want to get into it…just like he didn't. She understood, too, she said and that was why she didn't press him for details about his own situation.

After they exchanged all of their usernames and gamerhandles he knew that she was a girl, an actual girl, which just made it worse because, well, he was talking to an actual girl! The nervousness came and the empty noddle cups on his desk went flying. They talked over the mic and he heard her voice. That was a girl's voice. Her username was still Mob, background character, but now he knew that she was a girl. He had been picturing a stick figure, honestly, because her name meant nondescript background character but now he was picturing…well a girl. Not an actual picture, just his half formed idea about what it would be like to be in the presence of a woman either than his own mother. Her avatars were all cat based so he didn't have much to go off of for her appearance wise. Still, though, he was talking to a girl…and she was talking back…and she never once told him to get a life. They even played gams together…

After they played their first round of co-op Bomber Guy 3D he knew that he was smitten. She had his back and he had hers and they worked well as a team, well enough on their first round to beat the other team, and that was just…wow. Working with her in game was almost like being with her…or another person. Her voice may have been flat, not much expression, but she was still talking to him and working with him and it was just…doki doki.

His heart did not stop going doki doki once, not once, even after it got late…or early…and he was having trouble keeping his eyes opened let alone playing. It didn't stop after he started drifting off. He wanted to stay with her, to keep on playing with her, but he was falling asleep sitting up. So was she, she said, but in her bed. Well a futon. She could use her powers to work the controller from a laying down positon which was something that he had stopped trying years ago. He tended to accidentally break controllers in his younger years, back when he was mad at everything and he just did not know why. He asked her how she got that level of control and she just said practice. She could practice and have control as long as she was calm. She said that it was like there was another her inside of herself and it made her do terrible things. What those things were he did not ask because he understood not to. He understood her, as well as two people who had just started talking on the internet that day could understand each other. Eventually they gave up on playing all together and just fell asleep talking over the mic.

His heart was still going doki doki when he woke up.

By morning, when he went to his inbox and saw a good morning message from her, he knew that this was the girl of his dreams.

And her name was Mob.


	2. Kageyama 'Mob' Shigeko

Mob hadn't left her room in three years.

She couldn't even if she wanted to. If she went out there she might have ended up hurting someone. She could not risk that. She had already hurt her little brother before, years ago, and she was not ever going to let that happen again. She didn't even remember what happened. One minute some bigger boys were trying to rob them and the next everyone was on the ground and there was so much blood…

But that would never happen again.

Mob would make sure of it.

She had no idea if it was dark outside or light, it all just sort of blended together. She didn't want to go to the window and check, she didn't much like looking out the window, so she didn't. The world was too big and there was too much happening and so much of it was happening without her….like it should have. People who were as dangerous as she was had no place in the world. Besides, it wasn't like she was lonely, she had plenty of online friends.

Who were mostly all offline.

So it was either nighttime or working/school hours. Mob hadn't heard Ritsu stirring around getting ready for his day, though she might have slept through that, so she had no way of knowing. She checked Fantasy Hell to see if anyone was on. Nobody she knew, not even SheWalksAmongUs, a nice girl Mob knew who sometimes wrote in all caps. She was Mob's age and went to middle school and was the President of her club and had lots of friends…

Mob was not jealous.

Mob had friends, sort of, and she had plenty of school uniforms too so she could at least pretend to be at school. Mom and dad bought her school books and she had some distance learning stuff she did sometimes so it was kind of like being at school. She liked to wear her uniforms when she did her school work, and to have a school life anime going on in the background, it was almost like actually being at school. Right? Ritsu said, on the rare times they talked, that school wasn't that great. It was boring, people were annoying, and the workload was insane. He said that he wished that he had time to stay home and play games all day.

Mob would never swap their places even if God himself offered her such a deal.

Ritsu was a good person, the best sort of person. He had a lot of friends, or at least people she could hear him mentioning to mom and dad when they all had dinner and Mob dropped in on them with the Alexa, even if he didn't seem to like them all that much. He was in student council and they met all the time which meant that he got to spend so much time with his friends and do lots of other stuff, too, that he said was boring but Mob thought sounded fun. He got to patrol the halls and talk to lots of people and help teachers out with stuff and plan special events like school festivals...

Ritsu was so lucky.

He didn't just get to go to school, either. He had a job. Sometimes he helped out this guy, Reigen, with stuff. He only earned three hundred yen an hour, not enough for even the cheapest of loot crates, but he still got to hang out with someone and do stuff…not that Mob was sure what, exactly, he did. Wrote receipts, he said, and file things. Sometimes his boss got him ramen or takoyaki or other stuff after work. Ritsu even offered to bring her along one day…

Not going to happen.

That would have been too dangerous. She was not going to put him or anyone else in the hospital ever again. Besides, if she wanted ramen or takoyaki mom would just make it for her. Mom took good care of her. Mob felt guilty, sort of, because mom was only working part time now but mom said that a woman's place with at home taking care of her children. Mob wondered if she would ever end up having to take care of her parents when they got old. Not her children, of course, because she didn't even know any boys irl to begin with.

And if she did have a child it might be like her.

She could have a child if she wanted to. The book that mom left outside of her door said that she could if she had…that….not that she would ever get the chance to. She didn't know any irl boys besides her little brother and she knew that she never would. Meeting a boy would have involved leaving her room and that was, obviously, not an option. She didn't even like to think about that. How nice it would have been. They'd meet in a clubroom, maybe, or maybe on the rooftop of the school, in her mind she went to school, and he would be so nice to her. He wouldn't be afraid of her, not at all, and he would maybe even have powers like she did. He'd make her heart do that doki doki thing…

Her computer chimed.

She minimized her game. Nobody was playing Fantasy Hell but her, which was a good time for rare drops and grinding, and as much as she liked playing she liked talking to her friends too. She went over to her messenger. Maybe it was that hamster guy again, he was nice…

Not him.

Another guy.

She liked this guy. His name was Serizawa and he was just like her. He lived in his room too and he had powers just like she did. He had trouble controlling his all the time, too, just like she did. She smiled a little as she composed her long and eloquent message to him.

'_Hi.'_ That seemed like thing to say. She wasn't always the best at picking out the best words for things. She saw the three dots next to his name. He was typing. She felt her hair starting to float. She reached behind herself and began to put it in a braid.

'_Good morning' _She smiled, and not just because he sent her a happy face emoji after that. She pulled her hand away. Ick. Hair grease. When was the last time she had a bath? She couldn't remember, which meant that it had been too long. She didn't want to take a bath right then, though, because he had just come online.

'_It's morning outside? I wasn't sure and my clock is all messed up.'_ Said Mob

'_I have no idea, honestly, but I just go up so I'm going to call it morning. What happened to your clock?" _Said Serizawa

'_I had to make my villagers grow up faster so I messed with the time and date. Thanks for the recommendation by that way, it's a fun series. Virtual Village 3 is my favorite because there are more objectives. I was just playing Fantasy Hell, though.' _said Mob

'_Nice! I'm glad you liked it : - ). Are you going after the new rare drop in Fantasy Hell? I haven't gotten it yet : - ( ' _said Serizawa

'_I was but then I got sidetracked cutting down trees. I'm going to make a better bow so I can use it to get the boss and the rare drop. I don't know why a giant zombie rabbit would drop a revival ring, though. wouldn't it drop an instant death item instead?' _said Mob

'_You would think. I have no idea how they come up with these drops. Do you remember back last month when the giant apple boss thing dropped nothing but low level potions of metal working? What was the connection supposed to be?' _said Serizawa

'_I know! We fought that thing in the endless forests of monster island, there wasn't even any metal around to craft!' _said Mob. She laughed out loud but did not type it out. That had been a fun…stretch of time. She wasn't sure how long that stretch of time had been but it had been a fun one. It's always a fun stretch of time when she and Serizawa are together.

'_And Monster Island is just a name, too. It actually connects to be mainland now. X D' _ said Serizawa. Mob smiled and laughed just a little. Her braids began to float behind her. Her keyboard, too. Her powers were acting up again. She took a deep breath and rocked back and forth in her computer chair. The wheels ran over some junk she had on the floor and that just made it worse. She could hear the chip bags and candy wrapper crinkling under her wheels and it just got worse and worse and now she could hear the chime, chime, chime of her computer and she knew that she had to calm down and come back-

'_I don't know why they call it monster island, though, because there are monsters everywhere.'_

'_I heard that there's a hidden castle on Monster Island though and I thought that maybe we could look for it today.'_

'_Or not, we can do whatever you want. We can go and pick apples again until we find some golden ones. I hear they changed the drop probability from one to five percent which doesn't sound like a lot but would really shave a few hours off.'_

'_Mob?'_

'_Did I do something? If so then I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bother you or to spam you or anything.'_

'_Are you afk?'_

Mob willed herself to calm down. Her room was a mess, now, but that was normal. Mom never came in to clean, Mob didn't let her, and Mob was something of a packrat, too. There was a cat plushie on her keyboard, now, and she used her powers to put it back on her futon. All of her plushies, actually, while she was at it. This helped her calm down a little. Right. She couldn't hurt anyone because she was all alone. She was alone and everyone was free of her and safe from her. As long as she was in her room everything would be alright.

She took a few deep breaths.

She put her hands back on her keyboard and started typing. She hoped that he was still there. Maybe he had gone afk. Maybe his mom had left him breakfast or lunch or dinner. Maybe he was playing a console game and didn't want to be disturbed. There were a lot of maybes. There were so many maybes that Mob had to start and stop several sentences because she had no idea what he was doing or if he was even there and it was making her-

No. Calm down.

She was alone.

Everyone was safe from her.

She had just made a mess. That was all.

She had somewhat cleaned it up.

Everything was fine.

'_I'm here, Serizawa. Sorry, I was just afk for a little bit. I just had a moment, that's all, but I'm better now and yes I would love to find the hidden castle with you. I heard about that too it's only supposed to appear for a short while kind of like the time castle from Galaxy Express Three Nine. I just hope that there's no Count Mecha he always scared me.' _Said Mob. That was maybe too many words but she had to say something to him. He was her friend and she could not just ghost him even for a little while. She practically held her breath as she saw the three dots appearing next to his name.

'_A moment? Are you ok? I'm sorry if I did anything to set you off. Also you know Galaxy Express 999?'_ said Serizawa. Mob frowned. Of course she knew the Galaxy Express, who didn't?

'_It wasn't you, it just happened. Also of course I know Galaxy Express Three Nine, who doesn't? It's a classic of anime.' _Said Mob

'_That's true but most people don't know it because it's so old. It's from before I was born, way before. I wish they made series about the Galaxy Express though we did get one about Captain Harlock about three years ago so there's that.' _Said Serizawa

'_They never pick up good series. I've been waiting for years for another rebuild movie, or at least an anime adaptation of at least one EVA spinoff manga, but they just don't make anything that I like. I mean I like the things they make now but it's been mostly club animes and stuff. I mean I like club anime but I also like other things.'_ Said Mob

'_I know what you mean. It's like how they haven't released a new Bomber Man game in decades. I mean it wouldn't lend its self well to 3D but retro throwback games are very in right now, which I like. That was the best era of gaming back when the second bomber man came out.' _Said Serizawa. Mob stuck out her tongue. When it came to console games Serizawa had a pathological aversion to anything with more than two dimensions. She got where he was coming from, she had played some games like Sonic which didn't really go well with 3D but there were lots of great 3D games too. Mario made the jump to 3D very well, not that he agreed with her on that. That discussion had been the closest that they had ever come to a fight in their friendship.

'_The best era of gaming was two years ago when Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon came out X D' _said Mob. Now that was a great game, best in the series, plus online play so she didn't have to bother Ritsu to trade and battle with her like when they were kids…not that she would have minded…no. She needed to stay away from Ritsu and not play with him or talk to him or be with him. For his own good. She needed to leave him alone and let him be free of her.

'_You and I are just going to have to agree to disagree. I mean I like pokemon and all but I guess that I'll always be attached to the games I played when I was a kid.' _Said Serizawa

'_Me too. The first game I ever played was pokemon red. My dad got me and my little brother and old used copy to share when we were really little and I've liked pokemon ever since.' _Said Mob

'_You had red? I had blue. We could have played together : - )' _said Serizawa. Mob smiled. They could have played together. She had still been a part of society back then. Would they have been friends if they had known each other? Maybe. She had never had many friends even before all of this but she had never had anyone who had as much in common with her as he did. She was about to start typing again when the familiar sound of the Alexa robot thing filled her room.

Mom was dropping in on her.

For a moment Mob fears that mom is going to come knocking at the door like she used to before they got all of the Alexas. She doesn't, of course, because mom and dad had bought all of these 'spying robots' as dad called them so that they wouldn't have to bother her. Also dad's words.

Mob knew that she, in fact, was the one who was bothering them.

"Shige! I'm going to work now, I'll be back around dinner time. Your brother has work today and your father is staying late at the office so I want you to take a bath today, or at least a shower. I washed some of your clothes, too, they're in the basket outside of your room. Take off those pajamas and leave them in that bathroom. I got you a new Japanese workbook and some more napkins, too, they're on top of your clean laundry. Don't forget to wash your hair!" said Mom. Then the Alexa hung up. Mob reached behind her and touched her braid. Very greasy. Long, too, all the way down almost to the small of her back. Mom might try to cut it again…

Scissors were sharp. Mob was dangerous.

Mob heard the front door slam loudly. Right. She had the house to herself. It must have been daytime. Right.

'_Or not, we probably wouldn't have even known each other. I'm sorry I said that.'_

'_But I would have liked to know you. I've never met a girl like you before.'_

'_Are you ok? Are you having another moment with your powers?'_

'_Mob?'_

Mob pulled her nightshirt up over her nose. She smelled. Right. She hadn't put on new pajamas in a while. Bath day. She had to take a bath now or she would lose track of the time and she might risk running into Ritsu when he came home. That would have been bad. If she ran into Ritsu then he would want to talk to her face to face instead of through her door or through the walls or through the Alexa and then she might end up losing control and accidentally hurting him. That would not be good, not good at all, and she would never be able to live with herself if something like that happened again. Ritsu was her only brother and she needed to keep him safe from her. She needed to keep everyone safe from her.

She felt her powers crackling under her skin.

Right. Time to get in the tub really quick because she smelled bad and she could not get sick because the germs might travel through the house and then the whole family would get sick and then they wouldn't be safe from her at all and then-

'_Are you ok? Sorry to spam.'_

'_I'm fine, my mom just said that it was time for me to take a bath. It's been a while I guess. I'll be back in about an hour and then we can play. If you have time, of course, not to make you do anything you don't want to do.' _Said Mob

'_It's no trouble at all. I should probably take a bath, too, because it's been a while for me too. I think my mom is either not home or sleeping. Brb. See you in about an hour. : - )' _said Serizawa. Mob didn't log herself out, she just got up and crept to her door. She knew that nobody was home but she still opened it only a crack.

A thin sliver of light shined into her room.

Daytime.

She pulled her laundry basket in with her powers. She'd work on her Japanese workbook later. She put that off to the side and put one of her school uniforms next to it. This one had a blue skirt like the girls at Ritsu's school wore. She'd play school later, after she and Serizawa played together, and also after her bath.

She crept back to the door and opened it a crack once again. Then she opened it a little wider and a dizzy sort of feeling, the one that always swept over her when she left her room, hit her. She took a deep breath and sprinted down the hall and to the bathroom. She threw herself through the door, locked it, and pulled the bathroom curtains shut.

Dark. Just how she was used to. Just how she liked it.

The world was too big and she was too small. The world was full of people who were better off without her. She didn't need anybody, anyway. She didn't need to go outside or to school or to make irl friends. She had online friends, even a very good online friend.

The sort who, sometimes, made her heart go all doki doki.


	3. Kageyama Ritsu

"Good job today, kid!" said Reigen as he patted Ritsu on the back. Ritsu stumbled forwards a bit but caught himself.

"I didn't do anything, I just threw some salt around. Anyone could have done that." Muttered Ritsu. He looked down at the sidewalk. The sun was going down and it cast long shadows. His was almost as long as Reigen's.

"Yes, but not anybody could be the assistant to Reigen Arataka, greatest psychic of the-" said Reigen

"I know you don't have any powers." Said Ritsu. There was a heavy silence between the two of them. Ritsu looked up at Reigen. Brown eyes met blue. Reigen shifted nervously in place for a moment.

"Kid, you crack me up, you know that! You're hilarious, you should do standup." Laughed Reigen. Ritsu rolled his eyes. If he hadn't believed Reigen at ten then he certainly wasn't going to believe Reigen at thirteen.

"So should you." Said Ritsu. That just made Reigen laugh harder. Ritsu waited for him to come to a natural end to his laughing fit. He was tired, kind of. Some old lady said that her house was haunted. Strange noises at night and the like. Well it turned out that her cat was getting in the walls through a hole in the front hall closet. He and Reigen patched up the hole and then spread some salt around and burned some incense to make it seem like they had actually done something.

They were liars but they also helped people, so it was ok.

Plus Shigeko liked his stories.

"So, ramen or takoyaki? Or maybe MobRonald's, you still like Merry-Meals, right?" asked Reigen

"I'm thirteen." Said Ritsu

"Right, sorry. Man, where has the time gone? I remember back when you were so small-" said Reigen

"I was ten, Reigen, not two." Said Ritsu

"Fine, you weren't small at all. You were a whole ten years old." Teased Reigen

"Well you were, like, forty." Teased Ritsu right back. Reigen put on that look, that pretended to be offended look, and Ritsu felt himself starting to smile just a little bit.

"I'll have you know, disciple, that I am not even thirty yet. Still in the prime of my life." Said Reigen

"Well I'm still in the spring of my youth. Better to be in the spring of my youth than the prime of my life, I'd imagine. I mean if you're in the prime of your life then doesn't that mean that it's all downhill from there?" asked Ritsu. Reigen shook his head.

"When did you get so smart? Anyway, ramen or takoyaki? Or maybe both, that was a big job and I am starving." Said Reigen

"I have to come home for dinner tonight. My dad is staying late at the office and my mom needs someone to eat with or she gets depressed." Said Ritsu. Mom said that she needed the company or else she would overeat but Ritsu knew the real reason. Not that he didn't enjoy eating with Reigen…sometimes. He was good company…sometimes.

"Oh yeah, I feel you. My dad was like that too. Well give your parents my best…oh! And your big sister, too. How's she doing these days?" asked Reigen

"…she's still sick." Said Ritsu

"Right. Damn. That's rough…well here, get her something nice." Said Reigen as he fished out several hundred yen worth of coins from his pockets. Ritsu held his hand out and got his meager pay for the day. Barely anything but he was thirteen, it wasn't like he had any bills to pay or a family to support. No. Most of his money, actually, went to getting stupid stuff at the hundred yen store.

No. Not stupid. Not if it was for Shigeko.

He usually stopped off at the hundred yen store after work. It was right on the way home and it was all he could afford, too. Reigen only paid him three hundred yen an hour, not a lot considering how often Reigen told him that he was an indispensable asset to Spirits and Such. Ritsu knew that he wasn't. Any dumbass could do his job. Just follow Reigen around doing odd jobs and tossing salt around. He had more stimulating work to do in student council. He stuck around, though, the company was alright sometimes and he did get paid.

Plus he had some stories he could tell, too.

He hadn't seen, really seen, Shigeko in years. Sometimes he caught glimpses of her while she ran from her room to the bathroom but that was it. He never really talked to her either. Always through her door or through those stupid spying robots that mom and dad put through the entire house. Mom and dad said that they were to make Shigeko feel like she was a part of the household but she never dropped in on anyone. Mom and dad dropped in on him plenty, though, and he debated tossing the damn thing but Shigeko could have wanted to talk to him…

Not that the really talked.

He told her things through her door. He told her heavily embellished stories about his school day and his job. He made it all seem like it was more fun than it was. Shigeko loved school and mom even bought her a bunch of uniforms to wear in her room while she did her homeschool stuff…which made no sense. If Shigeko loved school so badly then she could have just left her goddamned room and gone to school!

He takes a deep breath, a centering breath, like Reigen taught him. The guy may have been a fraud but he did know some stuff about things like meditation. Ritsu got mad, sometimes, and when he got mad he tended to…well there were a few holes in his walls covered by posters and some twisted spoons buried in the furthest reaches of his bottom drawer. He had a problem with that, getting mad, but taking centering breaths helped…

Like now.

It would not do good to start breaking things in the hundred yen store.

Reigen didn't pay him enough to pay for an entire broken display of…what was that? Canned bread? Ick. Who the hell ate this shit? For a hundred yen he was tempted to get it just for the novelty factor. Shigeko might have liked it, she even might have eaten it, too. Mom had told him over and over again not to get Shigeko any junk food because she got zero exercise and if she got a cavity or something there was no way to take her to a dentist. Because she was sick.

That was what they were calling it.

That was what mom and dad told the neighbors when they asked after Shigeko. That was what mom and dad had told grandma when she asked why Shigeko hadn't come up for the summer. That was what mom and dad told the school when Shigeko stopped going. She was sick and she couldn't leave her room.

That was what Ritsu told people.

He told people at school, people he had gone to elementary school with, that his sister had come down with a serious illness and could not leave her room or have visitors. That was what he told his teachers when they asked about his home life. That was what he told Reigen on the day they met all those years ago. Ritsu had seen some flyers, the ones that Reigen occasionally blanketed the neighborhood with, and headed down to his office. He had thought that he had met someone like Shigeko, someone who could help her, or someone who could help him find his own powers…

But Reigen turned out to be a fraud.

But a nice one.

Reigen was good company, better company than mom and dad were in those days, so he kept on coming back despite Reigen saying over and over again that he was just way too busy to have a kid hanging around. That was why Ritsu wouldn't leave, back then, because he wanted to be contrary. After a week of hanging around Reigen taught him how to write up receipts and answer phones and check he Spirits and Such E-Mail and spread salt around and put up fliers and, eventually, Ritsu had his first job.

Mom and dad didn't have much to say about it, back then.

They were so busy back then with Shigeko. It was after those older guys had tried to rob them. Ritsu had tried to be a good little brother and protect his sister, she was a girl and those were guys and he hadn't been sure of what could happen to her exactly but he knew that there were a million and one bad things that guys could do to girls and he did not want Shigeko to have those things happen to her so he tried, and failed, to protect her…

The last thing he remembered was a bright white light.

Then he woke up three days later in the hospital. The doctor said that he had been awake the whole time but Ritsu had no memory of that. He just remembered opening his eyes and asking for his mom and then everyone rushing around and crowding him.

Dad was there. Mom was there. Shigeko was not there.

She had been in her room for three days. She only came out to use the bathroom, mom and dad said. They said that she was going through a lot and that she blamed herself. They said that she was being silly. They said that she was being stubborn. They yelled at her through the walls to come out. They begged her through the walls to come out. They tried to bribe her with dolls and candy and games and dresses and headbands to come out. They even tried to take her door out of the wall entirely.

Nothing worked.

They even called in a guy that mom and dad called a 'special kind of talking doctor' which Ritsu knew meant a psychologist. But that made no sense. Those kinds of doctors were for crazy people and Shigeko was not crazy. Ritsu knew, back then, what they did to crazy people. He had seen it on TV, what they did, the places they put them. White rooms with padded walls and locked doors where they kept you in white pajamas and straightjackets all day long. Where they fed you through a slot in the door and hosed you off in a big room with actual hoses. Where they hooked you up to all kinds of machines and did terrible things to you.

Ritsu did not want his sister to end up in that kind of place.

So Ritsu lied and said that he was the one who had beat up those bullies. He said that he had fallen and hit his head. He said that he and Shigeko were only playing hide and seek. He said that Shigeko came out of her room all the time and that mom and dad were telling lies for attention. He said a lot of stuff. He said so much that by the end of it he knew that he was the one who sounded crazy but that was fine. If they thought that he was crazy then he would be the one taken away to the insane asylum, not Shigeko, and that would have been just fine because he was the brother and brothers were supposed to keep their sisters safe.

Nobody ended up going to the insane asylum.

The doctor made the whole family sit down and talk about how they felt about everything, which Ritsu though was a waste of time, and then he said that from everything that he had observed, he had been coming to their house for days and bothering Shigeko and the rest of them, that Shigeko had something called 'acute agoraphobia' which was a fancy way of calling her a shut in. He said that this was her way of reacting to a very traumatic event and that the last thing that mom and dad should do was try and drag her out of her room. They needed to give her space to process her trauma, the doctor had said, and then he gave mom and dad the name and number of a specialist.

Who mom and dad did not call.

Mom and dad argued a lot about all of that. Ritsu didn't much like the arguing so he stayed away from home for as long as he could. That was how he wound up with Reigen. Reigen at least listened to Ritsu even though he was a fraud and a liar and a whole bunch of other stuff. Reigen didn't know the truth, though. Mom and dad made sure that Ritsu knew to tell everyone that his sister had a very sudden and serious illness which made it impossible for her to receive visitors or leave the house. Sick. Ritsu told everyone, including Reigen, that his big sister was sick.

Which made him the liar.

But lying was ok if it was for a good reason. Like how later on he would spin his day into some grand adventure for his big sister. He'd talk about the passionate debate, or rather argument, that the entire student council minus him got into over the list of suspect clubs. There was a motion to ban all fan clubs because the Tsubomi fan club, something that Ritsu could not begin to understand, kept on popping right back up after they were banned but just under the names of different idols who looked like Tsubomi. In Ritsu's opinion if Tsubomi didn't have a problem with the fan club then there was no reason to abolish it. It wasn't like those clubs had a budget that they were wasting, not like the Telepathy Club anyway….Ritsu might have to omit that debate from his recap of his day. Shigeko liked animes about underdog clubs and stuff like that…

He'd tell her more about his work day. She liked cats.

Shigeko loved cats. She loved milk and cats and anime about school life and feelings and giant robots and also videogames about school life and feelings and giant robots. MMORPGs too but Ritsu never got too into those. Plus it just felt…weird…to be hanging out with his sister over the internet when she was literally in the next room. He wished that they could have hung out together like old times but she just did not want to come out of her room. She said that he was safer away from her. He knew that even with what happened, the way she couldn't always control her powers, she was still his sister and she still loved him and he was still supposed to be there for her…

He was a bad little brother.

But he could at least get his sister strawberry milk flavored pocky sticks and crackers that were shaped like cats. Even though mom said that Shigeko wasn't supposed to have junk food because she might end up with bad teeth. Maybe bad teeth would be enough to get her out of her room, even if it was just to see the dentist. Maybe if she left her room, even to see the dentist, she would see that she didn't have to be afraid anymore and she could be his friend again and they could play together, even if it was videogames or dolls or whatever else she liked, and then they could be like they were before.

He got her two boxes of pocky.

And he left them outside of her door.

"Shigeko? Shige? Are you awake?" asked Ritsu as he knocked at her door. Mom was putting the finishing touches on dinner. He had barely managed to sneak past her with his bag of snacks that he was not under any circumstances supposed to give his sister.

He pressed his ear to the door. He heard typing and giggling. She was awake.

He knocked a little louder. He glanced behind him to make sure that mom wasn't going to come up the stairs to see what he was bothering Shigeko about. He wasn't supposed to do that, knock on her door, only mom and dad did that. Ritsu knew why. They were afraid that Shigeko would hurt him again. They were the crazy ones, not her.

"Shige? I know that you're awake." Said Ritsu. The giggling stopped. The typing stopped. He heard some show playing on her TV. Then it stopped. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. That was Shigeko, the energy that she carried with her. He wasn't afraid.

"Ritsu?" she asked softly through the door.

"Hey Shige, I'm back. I got you something, too, from the store." Said Ritsu as he shook the bag in his hands. There was some silence.

"You can drop in on my with the Alexa….you don't have to knock on my door all the time…" she said

"I hate that stupid robot, sister, and besides I like talking to you." Said Ritsu

"I like…I like talking to you too, Ritsu, but this isn't safe…you're too close." She said

"I'm in the hallway, sister, and your door is closed. Besides, I'm not afraid of you, you know that." Said Ritsu. She was quiet again. She did this, sometimes, she went quiet and waited for him to get bored or for mom and dad to call him away from her door. Why did she have to be like this?! She had no reason to be like this! The accident had been three years ago! Why did she have to-

"Ritsu? Are you ok?" she asked

"Fine. I'm fine, sister, why do you-why do you ask?" asked Ritsu

"I just felt…never mind. How was your day?" she asked. Ritsu could hear mom downstairs setting the table. Right. He didn't have time to go over his whole story, the whole heavily embellished tale of his day, but he could at least hear about hers. Like a good big brother.

"My day was ok. I did my workbook but not as much as I should have. Me and my friend, my online friend, have been really busy trying to get this rare drop item…" Ritsu tried to follow her as she went on and on about the videogame she had been playing with her friend all day. Ritsu worried a little about that, plenty of creeps on the internet, but she never went anywhere and didn't have a webcam or anything like that anyway. She was at least talking to people, which was good, because he had read that isolation was a problem for hikiko…for people like Shigeko. For people with her problem.

She wasn't sick.

She was fine. She had a fun day hanging out with her friend killing zombie rabbits and cutting trees or whatever. Just because it was virtual didn't make it any less real. He tried to tell himself that. At least she was telling the truth. What did he do? Sat through a long argument in student council, found another love letter from some girl he didn't even know in his shoe locker, did some odd jobs with an almost thirty year old conman, and had a mountain of homework to do before he went to bed just to get up and do it all again?

At least Shigeko, even stuck in her room, had some genuine experiences.


	4. Serizawa Yuzu and Kageyama Hana

"Katsuya? I have clean pajamas for you. I'm leaving them outside of your door, alright?" said Serizawa Yuzu as she stood outside of her son's door. She listened for some reply but found none. The television was off, too, as was that computer. She pressed her ear to the door and heard the sound of her son's soft snores.

He was asleep. Day and night didn't mean anything to her son and hadn't since he was twelve. At first he had left the windows uncovered but then, one day, he had tacked his sheets over the window because the world was too big, he had said, and it made him too sad. Of course she had immediately gone out and bought him some proper blackout curtains. It had taken stopping at three different stores before she could find some. Those were the days before free two day delivery.

Things were much easier now.

She cracked opened his door slowly, ready to shut it should her son wake up, but he still slept like a baby. She did this once in a blue moon, looked at him, really saw him. He was laying down in his bed, now. He was tall, she sometimes forgot how tall he was, and he needed a new bed. He had gotten so tall over the years. He was tall like his father had been. Tall and gangly, it looked like, something that she was thankful for. His diet was atrocious. She tried to feed him healthy food when she could but he liked cup noodle, chips, cookies, crackers, and other such convenience store fare and she was a good mother. A good mother made sure that her son was happy.

He looked happy.

He was smiling. She hadn't seen him smile in so long. She hadn't seen him in so long. The last time she had seen him, been this close to him, had been weeks ago. She brushed some of his hair away with her hand. It was getting long again. Something else he had gotten from his father. Her hair color but his father's hair texture. She wondered what else he had gotten from his father. She had no idea where his abilities came from but she knew that it hadn't been her. She had never seen his father do anything psychic or supernatural but she had known him briefly. A short courtship and then Katsuya came around…and then his father decided that raising a son would have been too much…

Yuzu was a good mother.

She reached down from his hair and touched his forehead. His skin wasn't the best. He sometimes forgot to bathe…not that he had any reason to bathe beyond basic hygiene. He lived in his room. He had some friends, one very good friend he had told her about before, but all of his socialization happened in this room. All of his socialization would happen in this room. He would spend the rest of his life in this room.

This was what he wanted. It was her job as his mother to give him what he wanted.

She pulled her hand away as he began to stir. He stirred but did not wake. The energy that existed around him was calm. He was still fast asleep. She hoped that he was having good dreams. She hoped that wherever he was, there, in his mind he was happy. As happy as he could be trapped in this room. This dark, messy, cluttered room. The room was cluttered with games and consoles and snack wrappers and other various bits of debris. He cleaned his room, sometimes, and left the garbage outside of his door for her to take out. Those times were few and far between. She wrinkled her nose at the empty water bottles scattered around the room. The chip bags and half empty noodle cups. The mountain of tissues in the crooks between his computer and the wall…

She got to cleaning.

She cleaned quickly. She gathered up what she could in an empty plastic bag as quickly as she could and then left his room before he could wake up. He would never forgive himself if he hurt her again. He hadn't meant to send her flying that one time, or the other times, and she knew that but he still hadn't forgiven himself. Not for that or what happened at school that awful day.

He had been punishing himself for fifteen years.

His computer chimed as she left the room. A person name Mob was online and sending him messages. She closed the door and didn't look at his computer beyond that. He needed his privacy. He had a life, sort of, and he did not need his mother prying into it. He was a grown man now and he didn't need his mother snooping around. She was curious but if there was something worth knowing than he could tell her at any time. She lived in the same house. He could easily just leave his room…

Not that he would ever.

But he could just call to her through the door. He had told her, before, that he had made a friend online. Her name was Mob and she liked cats and some shows that he liked and they hung out in some games. She. Her son had met a girl. Yuzu had wanted that for her son, girl or boy, for years. Since he started getting to that age. She wanted him to find someone to share his life with…or at least to make him happy.

Not that he would ever leave that room.

She worried for him, what would happen after she died, but she was hopeful for the future. She was hopeful that she could leave her son with enough money to be able to survive on his own after she died. They had flying robot helicopters, now, that could deliver whatever you wanted right to your door. After she died Katsuya would be more comfortable moving through the house. He wouldn't have to be afraid of hurting her anymore.

Maybe she would be a better mother to him in death than she had been in life.

"Shigeko? Shige? Are you awake?" asked Hana through the Alexa machine thing. Nothing on the other end. The computer was silent, for once, but she could have just had her headphones on. Honestly. She didn't know why her husband had gotten them for her, or why they had to be so expensive, she lived in her room who did she have to be courteous of? Honestly, that girl was so spoiled sometimes.

"Of course you aren't awake, it's only the middle of the day what would you have to wake up for in the first place?" muttered Hana before she ended the call. Shigeko was probably asleep. She didn't hear her click-clack of her keyboard, another expensive gift that her daughter did not need.

She sighed and zipped up her work dress. Four years of university for what? Part time work and a shut in for a daughter. Honestly. She had one set back and now she lived in her bedroom. She would spend her life in that room, catered to by her father, until everyone either left her or died. Ichimaro was happy to spoil his daughter rotten but Shigeko was Hana's child too and she was not going to waste away in the room. Ok, she they had no way of dragging her out of her room but they could at least make sure that she was being productive.

She sighed and checked her phone. She was scheduled to work every afternoon this week. Shigeko would be alone in the house. Hana was loathe to leave her alone in the house but they did need the money. The economy being what it was and them having Ritsu's future to save for…and Shigeko's. If things stayed the way they were Shigeko would die in her room.

Or she'd be Ritsu's burden.

Ichimaro liked to close his eyes and stop up his ears whenever she tried to talk about the future. There was no point in delaying any sorts of plans. The sad truth was that she and her husband were not immortal. One day Shigeko and Ritsu would find themselves all alone in the world and they would need to be provided for. Ritsu would, of course, be able to provide for himself. The boy was practically a genius, he would go places, and Shigeko would not hold her back. She held herself back. There had been an accident with her powers when she was eleven, it happened and now it was over. She had acted in self-defense and yes, for three terrifying days, Ritsu had been in and out of consciousness but that was all over now and Shigeko just needed to come off of it.

They did not need to call in a specialist.

Shigeko was just being suborn, that was all. She was being stubborn and Ichimaro just spoiled her and then Ritsu followed in his father's example and spent his hard earned money on things that Shigeko did not need but made her happy and if everyone kept up with spoiling her she would never, ever, leave her room.

Hana checked the Amazon. Shigeko's new school books were on their way.

The least she could do was make sure that her daughter kept up with her school work. At least that way, when she left her room, she wouldn't be too far behind the other kids. She'd have to go to a different school than Ritsu, of course, because having a sister like that would definitely hurt him socially. She and her husband still got all sorts of questions and they could barely handle them. How many times did people have to hear it? Shigeko was sick.

She was sick.

And she would get better.

Hana clicked her phone off and left her room. She passed her daughter's room and stopped. She pressed her ear to the door, soft snoring, good. Shigeko did not react well when people entered her room. Hana hadn't vacuumed in ages…but now was not the time. The last time she had gone in to vacuum Shigeko had hidden in her wardrobe with her music going so loudly that Hana had been able to hear it leaking from those ghastly cat ear headphones over the sound of the vacuum cleaner.

Honestly.

Hana knocked once, then twice, then thrice before she let herself into her daughter's room. The computer was on but for once her daughter was not sitting in front of it. Hana sighed as she took in the empty soft drink bottles and poky boxes at her daughter's computer. She went over and tossed the trash in the wastebasket. She wrinkled her nose as she got to the bottom of it. Another one of those gift cards for her games. Twenty thousand yen her husband spent so that their daughter could have digital clothes for her digital person or whatever her latest cyber obsession was. Honestly.

She picked her daughter's Japanese workbook up off the floor and flipped it opened. Yes, just as she suspected. Shigeko was slacking again. She needed to learn these kanji. She was not going to grow up to be the sort of adult who only wrote in hiranga. No, she'd have to talk to Shigeko about this later.

There's a rusting on the futon behind her. Hana almost drops the workbook as her heart beats so loudly and so quickly that she wonders if she's going to pass out.

But she doesn't. Shigeko was just turning over, she does not wake up. She knows what will happen if Shigeko finds her in her room. She'll yell, freak out, lose control of her powers, and make a mess. The same thing that happened whenever anyone upset her. The doctor said that it was a trauma response, an anxiety response, and that it would go away with a lot of time and a lot of work.

Well it had been plenty of time.

And she did not need to call in a professional to do any of the work. Shigeko was not a shut in, she was just a little spoiled, she was a normal girl who was just a little spoiled by her overindulgent father. That was all. Hana sighed and rested her hand on Shigeko's keyboard. She pulled her hand away quickly as the colors of the keyboard burst into life. A notification popped up in the bottom right hand corner that said that Shigeko was online.

That Mob was online.

Hana was Shigeko's mother, it was her god given right to snoop. She clicked on the notification as it took her to some chat thing that Shigeko…apparently had a few friends on. Hana frowned. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was good that Shigeko was socializing, people went mad from isolation, but it was also bad because the internet was full of weirdos and perverts and all sorts of other human refuse. She scanned through Shigeko's chat logs. Nothing that wasn't innocent. She chatted lot with one person in particular. It was mostly about games but…oh. He was like her.

Another psychic.

Another shut in.

This was a boy her age, it seemed like, because a grown man would have tried long ago to get Shigeko to do…something. Boys were shyer about it. That was why Shigeko didn't have a webcam. It had been difficult to find a computer without some sort of webcam in it but Hana knew that getting her daughter a webcam would have just lead to trouble. That was why Shigeko didn't have a phone, too. She was a naïve little girl who spent most of her time on the internet, adding a webcam to the mix would have just been asking for trouble.

Shigeko was getting older.

Even though she still played her games and watched cartoons she was still getting older. That night when she almost shook the house down because she had woken up in a pool of her own blood had been just awful for everyone involved but it had been a wake up call. Shigeko was getting older and she could not spend her entire life in this room. She was not a child anymore even though she acted like one and it was time that they found a way to get her out of that room. It was time that Hana found a way to get her daughter out of that room. She knew that her husband would be no help. But what? They had tried begging and yelling and pleading and bribing…what was next?

There were others like her. It was an epidemic, people becoming shut ins, but there was no end in sight.

Calling in a professional was out of the question. It had been hard enough all of those years ago to deal with someone sticking their nose into her family life. A week and several tens of thousands of yen later that so called professional hadn't said a thing that Google couldn't. All he did was pass on a name of another professional who would poke around their family life and tell her more things that she could have just Goggled and she was not going to piss money away on that again.

Shigeko stirred again.

The energy around the room crackled. Hana got up quickly and scurried out like a frightened crab. Shigeko had very little control over her abilities. Hana did not want to go flying again. She was getting older, now, and she should have worked harder at controlling that gifts she was cursed with. What else did she have to do all day, really?

Hana closed the door and let her daughter sleep.

Despite the numerous mistakes she had made over the years with Shigeko she was still a good mother.


	5. Confessions

Serizawa had no idea what time it was.

And he didn't give a damn.

He had been playing with Mob for…hours? It must have been hours. His eyes hurt and his back hurt and he was hungry and thirsty but he didn't want to get up. Not while she was there. They were awake at the same time and she had finished with her school work and he liked spending time with her so he was going to spend time with her.

Sort of.

He hadn't ever seen her in person and he never would but that was ok. This was the next best thing. He could still talk to her…or type with her….and he could still play with her. That was almost like being with her. Not that he missed it that much, being around other people. He hardly even remembered what it was like to be in the same room with someone, to talk to someone face to face, to touch them….

'_Are you afk? Serizawa?' _Oh. Right. They were playing one of her games, now. This one was all about finding things to craft with and crafting things to better find crafting materials with. She had her own little world there that she was revisiting. She had a house she had built herself and that was about it. They were building a house for him, now.

'_I'm here, I was just thinking' _he typed quickly. Right. Time was a thing. He had been wanting to spend time with her for so long and now he was. He was happy. He had been up all day waiting for her to come online…he was not in any way, shape, or form tired. No. He was wide awake at…whatever time it was.

'_Good things or bad things?'_ she asked. He didn't know what to say. What could he tell her? That he had been looking forward to talking to her, to playing with her, for the entire day? That he sort of…missed…being around people and playing with her made him want to be with her in real life? That maybe…that maybe he wanted to see her in real life even though that could never happen for the both of them.

'_Just things. Nothing that matters.' _There. That was the truth. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was him and her and the little world that they were building together. The little world should have been just as good as the real world. He was never going to meet her in the real world and he…he had to accept that.

She sent him a smiley face.

And his heart did the thing. It did that doki doki thing that it did when he was with her. She was so…her. There. She was there and she liked to be with him and that was enough to keep his heart going a mile a minute. It didn't matter what they were playing, even if he'd rather have been playing something 2D and simple, it only mattered that they were playing together. He had never spent this much time with a girl back when he had been out in the world.

It was nice.

This was nice.

He wondered what she was like in real life. He knew, vaguely, what she looked like. She said that she was short and had pale skin and long black hair and brown eyes. He had no idea what she looked like beyond that and he wasn't about to go and ask for a detailed description…or a picture. Oh no, he would never ask her for a picture.

She didn't have a webcam, anyway.

Neither did he.

He just never had reason to have one. He didn't much care for other people seeing him and, before her, he had never wanted to see any of the people he met online. He didn't really need to know what she looked like anyway. She could have looked just as bad as he did and he would have still cared about her…as a friend…only as a friend.

She could not be more than a friend.

He had liked girls back when he was still able to go outside. None of those girls had liked him back, though, and no girl ever would. He lived in his room, didn't shower that often, and had quit school when he was twelve. There was nothing really attractive about him. He could never meet up with her in real life, too, which made him even beginning to contemplate his own unattractiveness

'_Want to go back to Fantasy Hell? I'm getting bored.' _She said. Serizawa rubbed his eyes. Right.

'_Whatever you want. Any new drop items you're after?' _he typed as quickly as he could. He was starting to drift off. Not good. He could not end up with his sleep schedule opposite hers. He'd never see her again!

'_No, I just like it there and I haven't played in about a day. My mom keeps on making me do school work. It's so boring and it takes up so much time! : - ( '_ she said

'_I'm sorry, it sounds hard. I wouldn't know, though, my mom never made me do any school work.' _He said. Mom never made him do much of anything, she was nice like that. She took good care of him.

'_It's not that it's hard or anything like that, I'd just rather do it when I wanted to. She says that it's important for me to stay on a schedule. I don't know why it matters, I'm never going to leave my room anyway.' _She said. They didn't talk about this part of their lives, the whole being trapped forever thing. They talked about how hard it was to control their powers, how they were scared of what they could do, but they didn't talk about how this would be their existence forever.

'_Would you leave if you could?' _he asked because he…he wanted to know. What would she do if she were out there? If he were? If they met out in the world would they have been friends? Would they have played games together in the same room? Would they have….what else would they have done? They sky would have literally been the limit. Really. He had been able to fly when he was younger if he had been calm enough. He wondered if she could. He wondered if she would have even wanted to spend any time with him at all.

'_Yes. If I could I would go to school with my brother and makes friends and have a job and do all of the things he does. It's ok, though, because he tells me about his day. Every time he comes home he tells me how his day went. He has a lot of friends and he's on student council and he has a job and his boss is really nice, he says, and really silly too. I'd want to be him I guess. But not a boy because I like being a girl. I get to wear a much nicer uniform.' _ She said. Huh. So she wanted to be younger. He felt like that, too, sometimes. Sometimes he wished that he could go back and do it again.

'_I would too. I mean I wouldn't go back to school because I didn't really enjoy it but I would like to rejoin society. I'd like to spend time with you too. In real life.' _Said Serizawa. He would have never told her that in life but from behind a keyboard it was easier. It was so easy to talk to her. He would have been a mess talking to her in real life. The only woman he had spoken to in years was his mother. He had always gone to pieces talking to girls back when he had been able to go outside.

'_I would like to spend time with you too. I'd go to an arcade with you if I could. A retro arcade since you like retro games best.' _She said. He smiled.

'_I can play modern games too.' _He said

'_I know but I also know that your favorites are retro 2d games. You especially like Bomber Man and I think that someone somewhere would have the arcade cabinet of that. I used to like arcades cabinets a lot when I could still go to them. I like the way the buttons are and the whole experience of it I guess.' _She said

'_I used to love the arcade too back when I could go outside. I used to spend hundreds or sometimes thousands of yen a week there. I used to go to forget about life for a while. The arcade cabinets were better than the home versions in most cases too.'_ He said

'_I don't understand why you don't like modern gaming though. There's so much more to do. Mario got a lot better when he went to 3D. Mario Kart is more fun too and it looks a lot better. Isometric angles don't count as 3D. That's why I think that 3D Sonic games are fun, because the first ones weren't really in 3D. There has to be an arcade somewhere with nothing but retro games and if I could take you to one I would. We could play co-op or versus or whatever you wanted.' _She said

'_I'd take you to a modern arcade since you like modern gaming best. I don't understand it at all but I would want to make you happy. It would be a fun day if it were possible for us to go. If we were the only two people in the world maybe. If we were the only two people in the world then we could live in a modern arcade forever.' _He said. He imagined her being happy. He had no idea what she looked like but he could still imagine her just being so…happy. Him making her happy.

'_We could go to both if you wanted. Then I would take you to a candy store. I like candy but my mom doesn't like me having any because I don't ever get any exercise and I don't go to the dentist. My brother gets me junk food sometimes from a store where everything is only a hundred yen.' _She said

'_I would get you whatever you wanted. Real food or junk food. The way I see it is life is pretty awful so we had might as well eat whatever we want. I'm not even sure if we could get sick from what we eat with our powers. I'm almost never sick and I heal pretty fast, too. If you were here I'd share all of my junk food with you, even the pocky sticks. I know you love them.' _He said

'_We could play the pocky game.' _She said. He tried to remember that one and drew a blank. He hadn't had a lot of friends back then to play games with…

'_For fun. Just for fun. : - )' _She said. He replied with a smiley face even though he still wasn't quite sure what she meant. She knew more about these things but it was probably because she was a girl. Girls were more social and stuff like that. She probably had a million other internet friends that she would have rather been talking to. Why would she want to talk to him? He was….he tried hard to banish those mean thoughts from his mind. Life was hard enough without him being mean to himself.

'_I would get you whatever you wanted to. You're my friend, I like it when you're happy. Like remember how happy you were when you took the speed run record for the first Zelda came for two whole days? You were so happy. It made me feel like this.' _she said. She remembered that? Well it hadn't been that long ago…but he was still touched that she remembered. She had been there with him in spirit when we went for that title…and she had been so impressed too…There was a long pause. He stayed by his keyboard. He waited. He didn't know what he was waiting for but he still waited.

'_I can't figure out how to type it here. Go to the regular chat. Pls.' _he did what she said. He went to their chat and waited. His heart was doing that thing again and he didn't know how to make it stop or even if he wanted to make it stop.

Then she sent him a string of characters that he could not identify.

'_?' _he said. There was some silence on her part. He could see the typing dots appear and disappear beside her name. He wondered if she just didn't have enough bandwidth. That happened to sometimes. She had her entire family using the WIFI. It was just him and his mom and their internet never got slow even if they were both using it.

'_You don't know what it means or you don't know why I sent it to you?' _she asked

'_Both.' _He said. He didn't spent enough time in social places on the internet to know what all the symbols meant. He hoped that it didn't mean anything bad. Had he done something to bother her? He couldn't remember doing anything….

'_It means doki doki. That's how you make me feel.' _Serizawa could have been knocked over with a feather. She felt the same? What? How? How could she….? He decided not to question it. He decided not to ask her if she knew who she was talking to. A girl felt that way about him? An actual girl? How could…why would…why? Just why?

'_I just felt like telling you. I'm tired, maybe, or maybe because I just finished watching His and Her Circumstances and I was just thinking that when you feel like that about someone you should tell them. If you don't feel the same please ignore what I said and please still be my friend. I value your friendship a lot.' _She said. Serizawa is right back at his keyboard in an instant. He isn't going to ruin this. He doesn't know what he's going to do. He doesn't know what it would end in, if he told her that he felt that same, but he knows that he has to tell her before she goes afk.

' _I feel the same way.' _It takes a minute to tell her. His hands shake, the room shakes, his powers try to crawl out from under his skin. He manages to tell her and when he's done all he wants to do is hide under his covers and waiting for tomorrow to happen or later to happen or mom to tell him it was time to eat again.

But he doesn't.

And he's glad that he doesn't. She sends him a heart and a happy face. He sends her a happy face and a heart right back. He isn't exactly sure what it means but it feels like….like he may have just gotten himself a girlfriend.

This was great!

That had been terrifying.

Mob had her head tucked into the school shirt she was wearing. She couldn't believe that she had said that. But she had to. She felt that way about him and she was going to tell him because…because that was what people her age did when they liked someone. Normal people. She wanted…he was the one who had gotten her thinking about what life would have been like if she had been able to leave that room!

So she thought about it.

And the final episode of His and Her Circumstances had been playing in the background.

And she had watched that right after she had watched My Love Story.

She had been watching a lot of love stories lately. She had been watching a lot of TV lately. Well she always watched a lot of TV. Mom said that she watched way too much TV. Mom said that she was wasting her life in her room watching TV and playing games and that she should have been working harder at being normal. Normal girls went to school and had friends and boyfriends and lives.

Mom also said that she would never meet any boys in her room.

Mom said that she would never do anything unless she left her room. Mom said that she was going to live a life of nothing but regret unless she got out of her room and tried harder at being normal. She didn't get it. Mom just didn't get it. Everyone else got it. Everyone but mom.

Mob had gone to the one person in the world who truly understood her.

Then they played games for hours. Long after dad dropped in on her with the Alexa and told her that mom was sorry. Long after Ritsu told her about his day and the funny stuff his boss did. Long after the house had settled into the quiet that singled the end of the day. Long after her dinner had gone cold. She felt good when she was with him, the best that she had ever felt when she was with another person.

So she told him so before she lost her nerve.

She took her head out of her school shirt. She braced herself for what surely would have been a rejection. She shouldn't have said anything. She should have just kept her mouth shut and played games like they always had even though mom was right and she wasn't normal and she wasn't moving forward in life and even though she liked watching her shows and playing her games mom was right and she was wasting her life in her room but there was no way out because she had to keep everyone in the world safe from her and-

Oh.

He felt the same.

The room shook. Her TV flickered on and off. Her hair was trying to fly away. Wow. WOW. How in the world…she decided not to question it. She decided to just go with it.

Because it was great. She had a…boyfriend…now.


	6. A Rejected Invitation

Hikikomori was such an ugly word.

Her son had not dropped out of the world due to something like social anxiety or an inability to cope. He dropped out of the world because he was anxious about himself. He couldn't cope with himself. He had legitimate reasons to fear himself, to fear what could happen if he was out in the world, and Yuzu understood that. He had locked himself away for a decade and half, now, thereabouts, but it was for a good reason.

But he had locked himself away.

And the internet was no help whatsoever. She had tried everything to get him to come out of his room. Doctors and therapists and counsellors and priests and even other psychics, well self-proclaimed psychics, but nothing had worked. He just would not come out of his room and instead of beating a dead horse Yuzu decided to try and make the best of a bad situation. She bought him whatever he wanted, cooked all of his favorites, did his laundry, and asked for nothing in return. Maybe if she tried hard enough, made him happy enough, he would leave his room.

It was a thankless job.

But a mother's work was always thankless.

But it did get grating after a while. She lived for her son. Whatever Katsuya wanted he got. She spared nothing, no expense, for him and asked him for nothing in return. Not even a brief conversation or a meal shared together. Nothing. Just him and her in that house all alone. Day in and day out. Work, home, son over and over again.

Sometimes it felt just a bit maddening.

So she turned to the internet. There were so many other mothers going through the same thing with their sons. It was always sons, with one exception that she had found so far, but that girl was probably in her room because her mother was so rude and overbearing. Not that Yuzu was turning into one of those people who was unpleasant to others on the internet, no, she just didn't agree with this one woman's parenting methods.

All the experts said that her son would come out on his own eventually.

Even if they had no idea what it was that Yuzu had to deal with day in and day out. Not that she complained, no, not even when the house was too quiet and her son miles away even though his door was right there….even when she felt so terribly, paralyzing, alone….the experts also said that it was important that she had a support system in place for herself so she didn't lose her mind and burn the house down or any other crazy intrusive thoughts. She needed her own support system and it had to be in the internet. Forums and message boards for mothers who were going through the same thing she was, or so they said.

Mothers of hikikomori children.

She really had no one else. Her parents hadn't support her decision to have Katsuya, his father had been gone for ages, and caring for her son hadn't left her with much time for a social life. So this was it. The best thing to a social life that she had. Sitting curled up on her bed with her phone in hand while some drama played in the background on her TV. Soft ambient noise to make the house feel alive. If she muted it she might have been able to hear the clickity clack of Katsuya's keyboard or the sounds of one of his videogames if he was awake.

She muted her television.

Nothing.

He must have been asleep. She was about to unmuted her TV and get on with her evening when she heard a sound that she hadn't heard in ages. It may have been a decade and a half and his voice may have been a few octaves deeper but there was no mistaking what she had just heard.

Katsuya was laughing.

Actually laughing.

Yuzu knew that she should have given him his space but…but she had given him so much space already. She just needed to know what had gotten him so happy. She so rarely heard him laugh, so rarely heard him speak, so rarely even seen him….she just wanted to know what was going on. That was all. She wasn't going to snoop. She wasn't going to pry. She was just going to…see what was going on.

She crept down the hall and stopped at her son's door. His dirty plates were stacked neatly outside and ready for her to take down to the kitchen. A thin sliver of light could be seen coming out from underneath his door. She could hear the clicking of his keyboard occasionally punctuated by small laughs.

Then a big one.

And Yuzu had been so engrossed in her son, this little glimpse into his life, into him enjoying his life, that she hadn't realized just how much she was leaning forward. The boards underneath her feet groaned as she leaned in too far and then there was silence…silence which should not have been. She had ruined it, whatever had gotten her son so happy, and now he would…he would go back to being miserable…

"Just taking your dishes away, Katsuya!" she said. She picked the dishes up loudly so that he could hear. Not that he would ever have doubted her, she had given him no reason ever doubt her, but she was not about to give him one now.

"Ok…thanks mom…." He said. There was some more silence broken only by the sound of a wind chime. There was more silence and then typing…quiet typing….

"Mom…are you still there?" he asked her

"Yes 'suya, I'm here. Do you need anything? Cup of tea? Something to eat?" asked Yuzu. He usually sounded sad, lowkey sad, but this was new. The way his voice wavered. Even the feel of the energy that surrounded him was different.

"No I just…my girlfriend says hi." He said that last part quickly but Yuzu knew that she had heard him. She just about dropped the dishes that she was holding. Girlfriend? A girlfriend? How? Why? She knew what the internet was like, full of liars, and she knew how sheltered her son was….

"Katsuya….that's wonderful. Really it is. How did you…how did you meet her?" asked Yuzu. This was the day she had been waiting for. This should have been the thing to get her son out of his room. He was a grown man, not a child, and he wanted to act as a man did. A man found a woman, or another man Yuzu just wanted her son to be happy, and they coupled up and made a life together. This should have been a red letter day for her but instead she could only think about how her son could have been taken advantage of.

"We met on this website for people…like me. She's just like me. She lives in her room and she has…she can do what I do…" he said. Yuzu held her tongue. She had no idea what she was supposed to do but she knew that if she came in from a place of negativity and doubt he'd just retreat further into himself. They were talking, really talking, and that was enough to lift her up off the ground.

"Really? I had no idea that there were…others. What's she look like? What does she like to do? How old is she?" asked Yuzu. He told her. From what he said this 'girl' sounded too good to be true. Yuzu still held her tongue. She wanted nothing more than for her son to be happy. What else could a mother want for her child? This…this made him happy.

She was not going to be negative.

But she did offer to get him a webcam so that he could talk to this girl face to face. That way if this was some person being a jerk on the internet 'suya would learn for himself and she wouldn't be the one to pop the bubble of his happiness.

Because she only wanted him to be happy.

Mob couldn't remember the last time she had been this happy.

She was even happier than she had been when dad got her the cat ear headphones. She was even happier than when she figured out that they also made strawberry milk. Even happier than when she figured out how to read the EVA manga online for free. This was the best thing ever!

She had a boyfriend!

Sort of. They weren't going to ever meet in person, obviously. But this was still great! Someone wanted to be with her. Someone wanted her to be his girlfriend. Someone who understood her and made her smile and laugh and played games with her and didn't mind the awful thing that she had done or the fact that she still couldn't control her powers or anything like that. She had someone and he was great!

She'd never meet him in real life but he was great.

They were talking, now, not that they weren't always talking but now they were talking as a couple! This was so great! Even if they would never meet up in real life…

That was for the best.

She never wanted to hurt another person ever again. He had powers too and the same thing that had happened to her had happened to him. He understood. He understood why they couldn't meet up in real life. This was good, too. This was really good. This was the most good thing-!

"Sister? Are you ok? The walls were shaking." That was Ritsu. What time was it? Oh. It was kind of late. She had probably woken him up and now he was tired and he'd be tried through school and then his grades would drop and he'd never go on to a good high school and then he wouldn't make it into university and he'd work at a convenience store or something for the rest of his life and he'd always be broke and he'd have no future and it would all be her fault and-

"Sister? What's the matter?" He was right outside her door. He was close, too close, and if he got any closer she would have hurt him just like she had before and then he might not wake up this time and then it would all be her fault!

She drew her knees up to her chest. An invisible wall, no, a bubble formed around her. The bubble pushed her away from her desk and her chair rolled across the floor. The stack of carbonated milk cans she had collected by the side of her desk tipped over. The wheels of her chair crinkled over an old bag of chips.

And Ritsu was still there.

"Ristu….brother….I'm fine. Really. You don't have to be here. Please, go back to sleep." Mob managed to say. She was shaky and the bubble around her was shaky but that bubble was the only thing that was keeping Ritsu safe from her because he was right on the other side of that door and he could so easily open it, mom wouldn't let dad get her a lock or a deadbolt for her door because of safety reasons, and he had opened her door once before and she had barely had time to hide in her wardrobe and he could have gotten hurt then and he could get hurt now and if he got hurt it would all be her fault and-

"Shige, are you sure? The walls are shaking…I mean they do that sometimes….but I'm worried about you." He said. It didn't feel good, knowing that Ritsu cared, and in fact she wished that he wouldn't. She wished that he would have been mad at her about what happened, mad enough that he stayed far away from her and forgot that he even had a sister, even though she loved him so much…

But it would be safer if he just went away.

Because she couldn't.

"I'm fine. I was just…I was just talking to someone and I was happy….I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me, Ritsu." She said. The bubble was still there and it could have popped at any time but that would have been the worst possible thing because then he could have come in and then-

"I want to worry about you….I'm your brother, it's my job. I care about you Shigeko." He said. Mob wished that he didn't. How could he not tell how dangerous it was to be near her? Years ago when she had first stopped leaving her room mom had promised that if she didn't get better then she would have been sent away to the crazy house. It would have been hard to be away from her family but if there was some place where she could truly be alone she would have gone there in a heartbeat.

Besides, as long as she had her computer then she was never truly alone.

And her computer was chiming now. Right. She had been away from her keyboard for a while. She wondered why Ritsu always had to do this. He could have dropped in on her with the Alexa robot or he could have written her an email or sent her a chat message or talked to her on one of her games. It would have been a lot safer for him.

"Ritsu, I'm fine. You should go back to bed. It's late and you have school in the morning." Said Mob. She sounded like mom, then. Mom was always telling people what they had to get up in the morning and do. Even Mob. Which reminded her, she really needed to do her school work even though there wasn't really much of a point to it.

"….tomorrow is Saturday, sister, I just have work. Reigen and I are going to this arcade that might be haunted and he said that I could have half the money from the job if I played him at the arcade…even though he's almost thirty….and I could win something for you if you want…" said Ritsu

"Ritsu, you don't have to win anything for me. You already get me things after work all the time. Thank you for the pocky by the way. It was really good. I didn't even know they made-" said Mob feeling herself relax. She still had the bubble up but it had stopped being all shaky. She remembered the arcade. She wondered if it still had those retro games in it, or if they replaced that floor with something else, it hadn't been very popular when she was a kid. She should have played more when she had a chance. Serizawa said that emulators were nothing like actually being at the arcade cabinet.

"You could come with us…if you wanted to." He said. The bubble around Mob got shaky again. That would have been nice. That would have been so nice. She missed the arcade. She missed the sounds of the machines and the way it all smelled and all the different lights and all of the prizes that you could win. The biggest prize had been a giant stuffed dinosaur for thirty five thousand tickets. She wondered if anyone had won it yet. She wondered if she could have won it. She hadn't played those types of games in a while but it could have been fun. She could have worn one of her school uniform outfits with the matching hair ribbons and pretended that she was there after school and waiting for her friends or even her boyfriend-

She got off that train of thought.

It was pointless to want what she knew that she could not have.

"Ritsu, you know that I can't." said Mob

"But you can, sister, the door isn't locked and I'm sure that mom and dad would give you money. If they don't then I will. Come on, you love games. They have this knew one where you race cats and I know you love cats." Said Ritsu

"Stop it. Just…Ritsu you know that I can't be around people. It's not safe for them…and it's not safe for you. It's dangerous. You could get hurt. I could hurt someone. I could hurt a lot of people. I don't…I don't want that anymore…going outside. I'm here and I'm happy. Ok?" asked Mob

"But…it'll be ok, you haven't had an accident with your powers in years." Said Ritsu

"Because I've been in here for years and I'll have to be in here for the rest of my life. Ritsu, this doesn't bother me. I have friends and a life and even a…I have a life here, Ritsu, and you have a life out there…a life that I can't be a part of…a life that you're better off without me being a part of." Said Mob

"Sister, you don't have to shut yourself away to protect me! I know that you would never do anything to hurt me! I know-" said Ritsu before the sound of a door being thrown opened cut him off.

"Ritsu! Go to your room and leave your sister alone!" that was mom and she was cross. Mob pulled her nightshirt up over her head as quiet voices could be heard. She heard mom telling Ritsu that it was late and he had to go to sleep because he was a growing boy, which made sense and was reason enough in Mob's opinion, but then mom kept going.

"…you know it's not safe to talk to your sister like that…" Mob knew that it wasn't safe for her to be around people but…but it still hurt to hear mom say it out loud like that. Mob had no clue why it hurt, just that it did, and the hurt wasn't going away.

Also she had a lot of unread messages.

She got back into the chat thing with her new…boyfriend…but the good feelings were gone. The butterflies he gave her were making her nauseous. She had bene so happy before but, really, nothing had changed. She was still in her room and she still had her life there but…but it suddenly felt small.

Smaller than it had been in a while.

Ritsu was angrier than he had been in a while.

He and sister had gotten themselves into a stupid fight last night and it had put him in a terrible mood. She was still in her room. She was never coming out of her room. It was all his fault. He used to love the things that she could do, he used to even wish that he could do those things…and he still sort of did. At least if he could do the things that she could do then she wouldn't be worried about hurting him. The two of them could be friends.

They used to be best friends.

But now they weren't.

And it pissed him off. Mom had told him that it wasn't safe to bother Shigeko like that. She had told him that he needed to be conscientious of the fact that his sister was sick and that she couldn't have a lot of excitement. Sick. Mom was still calling it that. Would she had told everyone that he was sick, too, if he had powers like Shigeko's?

He had stared at his cereal spoon all morning trying to get it to bend.

When they were kids Shigeko had to use chopsticks because she was always bending the silverware on accident. It would bend and twist and snap apart without her even trying. Well he had been trying so hard that he swore he was giving himself a migraine but nothing at all was happening. The only thing that he got himself was a thermometer in his ear and his mom fretting about because she thought that he was getting sick.

Dad saved him, though, and sent him on his way when mom went to get the oral thermometer because it was more accurate. Dad gave him a few hundred yen for the arcade, too, and promised that he'd distract mom for long enough that Ritsu could clear the block.

Dad was cool like that.

He was always doing nice stuff for him and Shigeko even though mom didn't really like that. She said that dad spoiled them. Ritsu didn't feel spoiled and he knew for a fact that Shigeko wasn't. If she had been spoiled then she would have had more in her life than her room, a computer, a Switch, and an X-Box. Ritsu didn't get mom sometimes but she wasn't that bad, not like some of the other parents that he knew. Well not 'knew' but knew of. How Kamuro stayed sane with parents like his Ritsu would never know. As bad as mom could be she was at least never mean to them.

Not like anyone was ever mean to him.

Not that anyone would ever have been mean to Shigeko.

That would have been stupid. She may not have liked her powers but she had them and Ritsu had seen first hand what she could do to people who were mean to her. Not that those guys didn't deserve what they got, they totally did, but it had been scary…not that it would ever happen again. Not that anyone would have been mean to Shigeko anyway. If she had come with she would have had a great time. People were nice…at least most of them were…and she would have had a great time.

She probably would have liked Reigen, too, he was a nice guy.

Immature and annoying and weird sometimes but nice. Good company.

"I don't think that you need to salt the place. It wasn't even a ghost, they just needed a new power strip, remember?" said Ritsu as Reigen spread some salt around a supposedly 'haunted' machine. The owners had tried everything and concluded that it was ghosts, not the sheer amount of corrosion around the power strip, and called Reigen.

Who then got them a new power strip and cleaned off all of the corrosion.

"You can never be too sure, student, ghosts can appear at any place and be responsible for the strangest occurrences. The world around us is fraught with things that cannot be explained-" said Reigen getting into his usual spiel. He kid pretended to be annoyed but that was just him being a disaffected thirteen year old. Of course Reigen had been telling himself that back when Ritsu was ten and eleven and twelve, too. He knew that ghosts were real, he knew that the salt did nothing, and he knew that corrosion was common on these old arcade cabinets now but he still did this. The client wanted something supernatural and the client was always right.

Also the kid could use a little joy in his life.

It wasn't an easy life the kid led. It was hard having a bedridden sibling at any age but especially at that age. Everything was hard at that age. Poor kid was pushed to the wayside at home and Reigen couldn't blame his parents. He wasn't anyone's father, God willing, but he knew how hard it must have been to have a kid not even in high school be completely bedridden for years and years. He didn't know exactly what was wrong with Ritsu's older sister, he didn't pry, but it must have been bad if the poor girl couldn't even have visitors.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. The world is full of supernatural things that can't be explained. I've heard it before, Reigen." Said Ritsu. Reigen rolled his eyes and tossed a handful of salt at Ritsu.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today." Said Reigen

"I didn't, I just don't see what all the salt is for if we know that it wasn't a ghost." Said Ritsu

"It's for the client's peace of mind. Remember, the customer's always right even when he's not." Said Reigen. Something he had picked up in his days selling watercoolers but still applicable to his current line of work. Maybe the kid would pick it up too and carry it with him when he grew up and got a soul crushing office job. Not that he wished that on the kid, not at all, he didn't wish that on anyone.

"And that's why we have to throw salt everywhere?" asked Ritsu

"Yup. That's why we have to throw salt everywhere. Now get to salting! We've got a big day ahead of us, student!" said Reigen

"But the job is done with." Said Ritsu

"Yes, it is, but I recall a certain disciple of mine promising to play me at every single game in this arcade." Said Reigen

"I never said all of them." Said Ritsu

"Sheesh, you're like the only kid I know who doesn't like videogames." Said Reigen

"It's not that I don't like them…" said Ritsu. It was just that he would have rather been playing them with someone else. But she didn't want to play with him. She had locked herself away in her room and she wouldn't even come out to play videogames with him. He took a deep breath and spread the salt around like he was supposed to.

"Come on, there's something here for everyone. Why when I was your age I spent every single yen I had on…" said Reigen. Ritsu half listened to him. He mostly just had to calm down. Calm down and spread the salt and then hang out with Reigen. It wasn't like he had anything else to do on a Saturday. No friends to hang out with. All of his friends were 'at school' friends for obvious reasons….not that he had ever had that many friends. He hadn't needed to, not when his best friend lived right there with him in the house…

But they weren't best friends anymore.

She wanted nothing more to do with him…and that was fine. If she wanted to be that way…but she didn't want to be that way…but she had said that she was happy being that way…

A loud pop and then burst of light in front of him.

"Whoa! Looks like we need another new power strip over there. Seems our work is never done." Said Reigen. Ritsu nodded.

His work was never done.


	7. An Accepted Proposal

Sometimes Mob got dressed up.

She's heard that saying before, 'all dressed up and nowhere to go', and she knew that it applied to her. She lived in her pajamas most of the time, they were comfy and warm, but sometimes she got all dressed up. She washed her hair and braided it nicely. She took off her pajamas and out on some of her real clothes, her school uniforms with their sailor tops and pleated skirts, and she put on her long socks, too. Not her fuzzy ones that were more like slippers but her proper socks. She liked to do this sometimes.

Usually when she was doing her school work.

She didn't do her school work a little at a time like mom said. No, she had too much to do. She had virtual pets to take care of and other games to play. Plus talking to her boyfriend, the word makes her giggle even if she only thinks it in her head, took up a lot of her time. Yes, she didn't have a lot of time for the endless workbooks mom left outside or her door every so often. She wondered what the point of doing her school work even was.

It wasn't like she was ever going to leave her room.

It was hard enough running down the hall to the bathroom. She could not and would not leave her room and she accepted that. That was her lot in life. It wasn't a lot but it was her life. She didn't mind, not really, because this was what was best for everyone. Ritsu was safe from her. Everyone was safe from her. That was what mattered.

Besides, it wasn't like she couldn't live a full life from inside of her bedroom.

She had a stack of school books, a school uniform on, and a school life anime playing in the background. She was fine. She was happy. This was just fine. She sat down at her desk and called over a workbook with her powers. Classical Japanese. Why she needed to know classical Japanese she did not know. Most of her games were in simplified Japanese anyway. She took an internet test and she knew a little over four thousand Kanji. That seemed like enough Kanji. Besides, English was much more useful when it came to games. Korean, too, but that was even more complicated than classical Japanese. She knew how to read and write Japanese well enough to get by and she had no idea why mom made her do this.

But she would still do it.

She did not need mom knocking on her door demanding that she got her work done. When everyone stayed away from her door she was a lot happier. She could pretend that she was the only person in the world and the world was only her room and her computer and that was enough for her. She didn't need to be reminded of the world, the big scary world, that existed outside of her door. Serizawa felt the same way. He hated it when his mom knocked on his door about stuff. It scared him that he could have accidentally hurt her.

He got it.

He got her.

And she got him.

And thoughts of him were very distracting. She needed to get this done before mom started knocking on her door and asking after that work. She was behind, so behind, so behind that mom would complain. She might even complain to dad. She sometimes complained to dad and then dad stopped getting Mob the stuff that she needed. Like a new hard drive. Two terabytes was not enough. She needed a new hard drive and also a new gaming mouse because her laser was getting unresponsive and would not be fixed no matter how many times she cleaned it. She also needed a webcam but she knew that unless she really got into dad's good graces then she would never get one.

She had an Eye Toy thing for her PlayStation but it was not the same.

She wanted to actually be able to talk to Serizawa. They messaged all the time but that was not the same. She had no idea what he looked like. He was tall with brown hair and brown eyes. He was very tall, he said, well he said that he felt very tall but he hadn't seen another person besides his mother in a while so he didn't have much to go off of. She thought that he was tall, he was a boy, and boys were supposed to be taller than her. He might have been a little older than her, too, based on how much he loved retro games. She had no idea how old he was, she had never thought to ask, but he must have been somewhere around her age. Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten along so well.

She sometimes wished that they could hang out in real life.

They would get along well, probably, if they were friends in real life. They could play vs and co-op games side by side on her bed. They could watch TV on her bed together. They could hold hands on her bed together. They could ever…they could kiss, even, because they were a couple and that was what people did when they were in a couple, they kissed. Mob had never kissed anyone before, never, and she knew that she never would.

She didn't like to think about that.

Because she could lead a nice, full, wonderful life from her room. She didn't need to hold hand or kiss or any of the stuff that came after, she especially didn't like to think about the stuff that came after, because she had everything that she needed right there. If she had been a better person, if she had been less dangerous, then she wouldn't have had to spend the rest of her life in her room in the first place. But she did. So it was no use dwelling on all the things she could have done with her boyfriend if she wasn't so, very, dangerous.

She was happy.

She wished that she could have seen him, though, and that he could have seen her. That way…well she knew that they could never meet but that way it would have felt more real. She would have had a face instead of just an Avatar to put to the messages she read. She would have…she would have been seen, too. She hadn't been seen by anyone in so very long. Not that there was anything to look at. She had seen herself plenty of times and she knew that she was not pretty.

She wondered if Serizawa would think that she was pretty.

Even though she knew that she wasn't.

But he might have thought that she was pretty. His standards may have been different than everyone else's because he didn't really see a lot of girls. He only talked to her and his mother, he said, and mothers did not count as girls. They were, well, mothers. Mob couldn't imagine her mother ever being her age. She couldn't imagine her mother ever being even a little bit like her. Mom didn't care for games and anime and stuff. She also never had any reason to stay in her room forever.

Mom didn't get her.

Mob didn't mind, though, because she had someone who got her. He got her. Serizawa. And that was fine. She had everything that she needed right there in her room. She had…she had a lot going on. She had a boyfriend, online still counted, and she had a lot of stuff to do…and she had people to keep safe. She had to keep everyone safe from…from herself. That was…she was doing a good thing, then, staying in her room.

With only the sounds of anime characters being at school for company.

She scribbled down something in her workbook. She didn't know what. It didn't matter. The whole thing was pointless. She was going to spend the rest of her life in her room. She didn't need to learn this. She….she didn't much like the mood she had gotten herself into. She had no right to feel this way. The way she felt, the way she lived, it was all her own fault. She should have been grateful for what she had. She still had her little brother, she almost lost him, and being in her room for the rest of her life was a good trade for her little brother's life.

She had nobody to blame but herself.

She closed her book and buried it under her pillow. She'd do some schoolwork later. Maybe Ritsu could help her. He was so smart. They could talk over messenger or through the Alexa robot. Not through the door. That was much too close. They didn't need to get close to talk. They had technology, now, and with technology distance meant nothing. She had heard that somewhere, maybe in a documentary or something, and it made sense.

She didn't have to be near people to be, well, near them.

She had everything she needed right there in her room. Like her computer. Even if it was running out of memory it was still useful, like right then. Her computer pinged which meant that someone was messaging her. That was…that was a welcome distraction. She paused her TV and practically ran to her desk. She slipped a little, she wasn't used to wearing socks which were not also slippers. She didn't fall though, which was good, because then someone might have heard her fall and knock on her door to see what was the matter and then they would be much too close and-

It hadn't happened. There was no need to go worrying about things that had not happened.

'Good morning!'

She relaxed. A message from him. Serizawa. That was more than enough to put her in good spirits.

'Good morning' she sent him that and then a sticker of a happy cat. He sent her back a sticker of a cat with hearts for eyes. She giggled and held her hands close over her rapidly beating heart. Doki doki. She sent him the doki doki sticker, too, because that was how she felt. She could feel herself blushing. If she had been an anime character she would have had bright, big, blush stickers. She didn't know why she felt so embarrassed about this. She had a boyfriend and she liked him and it wasn't like anyone was around to see her blushing anyway. No one could have been around. She was alone. She had to be alone. Alone for everyone's safety. For their own good.

She remembered Ritsu's invitation.

And she tried to forget. Of course she wanted to be with him. Of course she wanted to spend time with her little brother. Of course she wanted to leave this room and have friends and go to school for real and go to the arcade and all of that. But that could not be. She had her room and everything that she needed was in her room. Not everything she wanted, of course, but that was just it. Those were wants. She was what she was, who she was, and she should have been happy with this.

'What are you up to?' he asked her. She looked around. She knew that she should have gotten back to her school stuff but this…this was better. More fun. This had something that she wanted, that she could get. She didn't really want to do school work. She didn't really get what the point of it was. She was going to be trapped in this room forever.

'Nothing. What are you doing?' she asked.

Serizawa had no idea how he was supposed to answer that question. What could he say? He had just woken up and he wanted nothing more than to talk to him because he had been feeling very alone last night? His mother had asked him so many questions about her and there were some that he could answer and some that he just could not. He had no idea how old she was, he thought that it might have been impolite to ask especially at this point, or what she was like. In life.

He had no idea what she even looked like.

But he did like her. This was…he had never had this with anyone before. Even if this wasn't everything that a relationship could be. Even if he would never be able to hold her or kiss her or any of that other stuff with her. It was…this was more than he ever could have asked for. Having her. Even if he didn't really have her.

Love had been something that had existed to him only in fantasy before. Before her. But now love was something that he had and he felt…well not love-love but…but liking a girl and having her like you back. Love was something that he had thought he would never feel, never have, but now he did. She was real. Even if she wasn't there for him to reach out and feel she was real.

And so was this.

She was telling him about a show she had been watching. She had been doing school stuff, she said that she didn't much like it but her mom made her, and she liked to watch shows about school life while she did her school work. Her mom made her do a lot of things. His mom never made him do anything that he didn't want to do. He liked his mom a lot for that. She understood him. She got it. Mob's mother asked her to leave her room often and do other things that she did not want to…and he felt bad for her.

It was bad enough being what they were.

She sent him a lot of stickers. He knew her, she did that when she was bothered by something. Well she sent him stickers and emojis a lot but there was a limit to how many. He hadn't exactly plugged the numbers into excel or anything like that but he knew that when she did a lot of stickers like this something was bothering her.

So he asked her what was wrong.

And she sent him a sticker of a cat shrugging.

Then a cat thinking.

Then a cat kowtowing.

She liked cats a lot.

'Sometimes I just feel bad about stuff. I was thinking about how I'm just stuck in my room and how much I don't want to be stuck in here. Just thoughts like that.' She said after a while. He needed time to think, too. He felt that way a lot, too, and he…he didn't want her to feel that way. He wanted her to be happy. To…he wished that she could have been happy. That he could have made her happy. He wished that they didn't feel the same way.

But they did.

'I feel that way too, sometimes. Sometimes I think about that kind of stuff too but you make me feel better. Being with you I mean.' Said Serizawa

'But we aren't together.' She said…and it felt like a stab right through the heart. Of course they were together…right? The room shakes a little. An empty soda bottle hits him over the head. He can feel something sticky in his hair. He needs to calm down. He needs to remember that she's with him because she wants to be and they're there together and that everything is going to be-

'I mean in the same room. I wish that we could be in the same room together. I would really like that.' She said. Now he was freaking out again but for a different reason. She wanted to be with him. The pendulum had swung in the other direction. Now he was freaking out because she wanted to be with him. In the very same room…but not this room. Not his filthy mess of a room. She wouldn't have liked it in there at all.

She said that she was messy, too, but probably not as messy as him.

Mob picked cereal pieces out of her hair.

She shouldn't have said that, she shouldn't have let her room get that messy, and she shouldn't have lost control of her powers like that. Now there were cereal pieces everywhere and her room was messy and she had said something really, really, really dumb. She shouldn't have said that. Of course they could never be together. He didn't need to be reminded of that fact, the fact that they were both trapped in their rooms, and now he probably felt bad and she had made him feel bad and now he wouldn't like her anymore…

And no boy would ever like her again.

Love had been something that she had only seen in shows, read in manga, and played in games. She had never thought that a boy would ever like her but there he was. He like her and he wanted to be with her and…and now he might not have. He was her first boyfriend, her last boyfriend, and her only boyfriend. Even if they would never hold hands and walk off into the sunset together or kiss under a flurry of cherry blossoms or do any of the stuff that came afterwards. Not that she cared about the stuff that came afterwards. That was so obviously never going to happen that she didn't even bother to give it much thought. That was just….it was something that she wanted but…but it would never happen.

Even more so, now, if she made him not want to be with her.

'I would like that too. I think about you a lot and I wish that I could be with you. I don't even know what you look like but I think about you a lot.' He said. Mob felt like she was floating away…and she was floating away. She was, in fact, floating away. Everything was floating in fact. She was losing control again…

She fell back down to Earth.

And she started typing because she had been away from her keyboard for far too long. She needed…she needed to say something but she did not know what. She wanted…there were so many things that she wanted to say but she just did not know how…but she had to try. She had to say something because the longer she waited to say something the harder it would be, later, to get some words out.

'I think about you a lot too. I told you what I look like, though. I'm a hundred and fifty three centimeters tall, I have long black hair, brown eyes, and pale skin.' Said Mob. She didn't look like anything special. She knew that she didn't. That was why he couldn't remember what she looked like.

'I know I just meant that I've never seen you.' He said.

Serizawa wondered if he was being pushy or anything like that. He wished that he had a face to put to his thoughts, his dreams, and his mother's questions. He liked this girl a lot, a lot a lot, more than he had ever liked a girl before…and the feeling was mutual…and it had never been mutual before…

'Do you want to?' she asked after a while. He ran a hand through his hair. Long and greasy. Long and greasy but still managing to defy gravity. He didn't look…he didn't look good. He knew that he didn't. If she was asking if he wanted to see her then she must have gotten a webcam…which meant that they could talk for real…which meant…

A lot.

A lot of stuff that made him feel like his heart was going to explode…both in a good way and a bad way. He wanted to see her, to see what she looked like, more than anything. Even though that would make the whole thing feel real. But why would it scare him if it were to start feeling real? He wanted this to be real and it was real.

She really was his girlfriend.

'I do.' There. Two simple words that took entirely too long to type. He waited for her to reply…and waited…and waited…

'I don't have a webcam or anything yet but I'll ask my parents.' Said Mob even though she knew that they'd say no…or at least mom would. Dad was a whole lot more likely to say yes to her than mom was. Yes, dad would be the one to ask. This was…this felt like it was kind of a lot…but in a good way. She'd finally get to actually see him. She didn't care at all what he looked like…

….and she really hoped that he felt the same.


End file.
